Metallica Take Over the Sphere in Las Vegas

Metallica have entered the Sphere.
On October 1, 2026 the legendary American metal band played the first of 24 scheduled shows at the spectacular Las Vegas venue, beginning a residency that will take them through March 2027. It is another significant chapter in the band’s extraordinary live career, but also a fascinating experiment: what happens when one of the most powerful live rock bands in history meets one of the most technologically advanced entertainment spaces ever built?

Opened in 2023, Sphere was inaugurated by U2, who brought their U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere residency to Las Vegas and effectively introduced the world to a completely new kind of concert venue. Since then, the building has hosted artists from very different musical worlds, including Phish, Dead & Company, the Eagles, Anyma, Kenny Chesney, the Backstreet Boys and No Doubt. John Mayer is also scheduled for a residency in 2027. Metallica now become the latest major act to test what can be done inside the enormous spherical structure.
And the first night immediately delivered something that longtime fans had been waiting for.
The setlist included “…And Justice for All”, performed live for the first time since 2014. “Now That We’re Dead” also returned after several years away, while “Battery” opened a Metallica show for the first time since 2014.
The 18-song set travelled through different eras of the band’s catalogue, from “Creeping Death”, “Sad but True” and “Wherever I May Roam” to “Nothing Else Matters”, “Ride the Lightning” and “Master of Puppets”.

There was also a particularly emotional moment during “The Call of Ktulu”, dedicated visually to the band’s late bassist Cliff Burton.
The performance came almost exactly 40 years after he died in a bus accident in Sweden in September 1986, and the enormous Sphere screen transformed the song into an immersive visual sequence centred on the Lovecraftian creature Cthulhu.
That screen, of course, is one of the reasons a Metallica residency at Sphere is so different from a normal arena or stadium tour.
The interior features a gigantic 160,000-square-foot LED display with extraordinary resolution, extending across the walls and ceiling around the audience. The venue also uses an advanced immersive audio system, haptic seats and other effects designed to make spectators physically feel parts of the performance. Outside, the Exosphere is covered by hundreds of thousands of programmable LED lights, turning the entire building into another enormous screen.
For Metallica, the possibilities are almost tailor-made.
Fire, darkness, skulls, monsters, apocalyptic landscapes and enormous cinematic imagery have been part of the band’s visual language for decades. Inside Sphere, those elements can become almost impossibly large, surrounding the audience rather than simply appearing behind the musicians.

But this is also where the debate around Sphere begins.
Supporters see it as a new generation of live entertainment, where music, cinema and technology become one experience. Critics have questioned whether the visual spectacle can sometimes become so overwhelming that the musicians themselves risk becoming secondary to the screen. It is a curious paradox: Sphere makes it possible to see things that could never be created in a conventional concert, but the bigger the digital world becomes, the smaller four musicians can appear within it.

Metallica may be particularly well suited to navigating that balance. Their concerts have always depended heavily on the physical connection between band and audience, and their music does not need technology to create impact. At the same time, their catalogue offers endless possibilities for a venue capable of turning a song into an entire visual universe.
The residency will continue with 24 performances in total, giving fans the opportunity to experience Metallica in a setting unlike anything they have previously used for a full run of shows. And with their “No Repeat Weekend” format, some weekends will offer two completely different setlists, making multiple visits particularly attractive to fans who want to hear deeper cuts alongside the classics.

U2 opened the door in 2023.
Since then, Sphere has become a playground for artists as different as Phish, Dead & Company, Anyma, the Eagles, Kenny Chesney and the Backstreet Boys. Now Metallica have brought heavy metal into the building.
The result is a meeting between two very different ideas of spectacle: four musicians who have spent more than four decades proving the power of a live band, and a venue designed to make the entire world around that band part of the performance.